Word: clara
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1950-1959
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...show begins on a somewhat regrettable note when the Master of Ceremonies cries, "This is your life..." Clara Mae is then bustled stagewards to watch her life travel from Gruel, Wyoming to Radcliffe College, where Clara proceeds to make good in the social "supermarket." The first act takes Clara through the Radcliffe Library, a jolly-up and a few other slow starters. What saves the act from becoming disastrously tiresome is the free swinging chorus girls (sixteen, in charming red shorts, weighing a collective ton) and the show-stopping humor of Liz Stearns as the charcoalgrey, knee-soxed intellectual...
After a while the show gets back to Clara Mae (Betsy Nelson) as she wonders how to win the Miss Informed intellectual beauty contest, and how to pick a beau from her two suitors, Dick and Derek, played by Richard Hines and Theodore Lappas. The young swains provided one of the more musically delightful duets of the evening as they pranced through "Why Do You Keep Us On a String...
...Clara Mae's main competition for the Miss Informed title are Ivy (Marguerite Tarrant) and the house mother, Miss Havisham (Helen Bee) who gives the girls the benefit of the knowledge gained from her old house in Atlantic City. The rest of the plot comes with the romance of bashful bohemian Fred (John Baker) and his less-shaggy but more-shrewd soul force Priscilla (Sallie Wolfe). Baker's voice is shaky, but he was a solidly insecure bohemian. Miss Wolfe's singing voice is pleasant, but her acting was wooden. As Fred's intellectual playmate, Alice Oberg's red hair...
Through all this Clara Mae is learning. As performed by Betsy Nelson, Clara is properly wide-eyed and sings well. By the plays end she, and the audience, are satisfied, which is a tribute to the cast's enthusiasm and that of the production staff. The book and lyrics by Margo Dennes and Al Jacobs were of little help. One good song, "Society" got mediocre assistance from Marguerite Tarrant. Peter Davis' music had but a few good moments...
...course of The Sin of Pat Muldoon, playwright John McLiam has the hero reach through the window of his Santa Clara, California, home to pluck an orange from a tree growing in the back yard. Somewhat later he informs the audience that redwoods grow along the town's main street. I am prepared to testify that in my ten years' residence in the San Francisco Bay Area I have not seen a single orange tree there, and that no redwoods stand in the center of Santa Clara. It would, though, be a pleasure to forgive Mr. McLiam his horticultural inaccuracies...